We tend to accuse others of hypocrisy when we are unable to understand their thinking from their own point of view. It’s one of the favored words of blameful
politics, which is why it is used so often both on the right and the left. — Joshs

I mean hypocrisy in its strict sense, e.g. espousing rules but holding themselves or others as exceptions. That's not really a subjective opinion; it follows from logic.

:up:

Do you mean such terms as oppression and harmful in a way that takes into account that from their own perspective , those who are ‘guilty’ of being oppressors act from intentions as noble as our own, and that inevitably, our own preferable perspective will appear to another group in a future era as oppressive? — Joshs

No, I don't. These traits are examples of hypocrisy: the people who do them wouldn't have them done back to them also. But how oppressive people feel about it isn't pertinent to my point, which concerns why their victims engage in identity politics. I would think that their oppressors thinking themselves noble would only justify their counter-narrative all the more, from their point of view.

Would you say that your characterization of those who are named by categories such as racism, misogyny and homophobia is compatible with Gergen’s
characterization of ‘those we excoriate’? — Joshs

I'd say they all belong to a specific subclass of that class, sure. First and foremost, they are those who excoriate. Second, they are excoriated in turn.

Incorrect. Unable to take my own life (because survival instincts are very strong) this is the alternative. If I had the strength to I would not be here right now. This is not a reason for living. — Darkneos

Then why do it. How can you simultaneously muster a reason for posting and no reason for living? You understand that living is kind of a necessary condition for posting, right?

And I was supposed to somehow mind-read your cryptic intended point? — javra

Sorry, presumed English was okay. Which tbf it often isn't.

Well, dude, I asked you about what on Earth your statement of backwards determinacy was supposed to mean in terms of causation. Making my two posts to you mostly about you. The vacuousness of you sending me to read your entire thread on QM as a followup reply seems to be lost on you, righteous one. But you’re not one to be bothered with explaining your extraordinary statements on a philosophy forum; in this case, that of quantum causes being fully determined by their effects; fine, got it. — javra

Bull. I answered your question quickly and unambiguously. The link was not by means of an explanation for that (hence "That said..."), it was just in case you were interested. If you're not, okay. But to complain after the fact that my original post to another user didn't address a question you were asking (presumably someone else) is just bizarre. I have no idea what's going on in your head and no inclination to find out.

I'm trying to lend insight but people insist there is reason for living. — Darkneos

Then you have a reason for living right now, which is to lend insight, even though you can't really succeed at that as you're confused.

In 1999 the social constructionist Kenneth Gergen... — Joshs

Constructivism claims that all assertions of supposed facts are in actuality just social constructs... — Pfhorrest

As I understand it, social constructionism is the study of *which* and *how* social constructs are shared. Social constructivism is the theory *that* knowledge is socially acquired. They are not quite the same thing. The usual dismissal of social constructivism does not hold here.

I'm not sure that dismissal is ever generally valid even of constructivism. At root it is about how we learn things through social interaction. Whether by lecture, by book, by conference or by journal, science is a social endeavour in which each individual acquires knowledge through interaction with others. If that society has some bad assumptions or biases, the individual will invariably learn those too. The classic, and perfectly valid, constructivist case in point is Freud.

Strong social constructivism claims that most or all scientific knowledge is like this, while others are more interested in the extent to which this holds in the harder sciences. The former are obviously bonkers.

Social constructionism by contrast takes a social construct as its starting point, for instance an historical account of money, or systems of morality. It is the objects themselves that are of interest, not how knowledge is transmitted (although how knowledge is transmitted *into* constructs is relevant).

Unless you believe in divine revelation or some such, you'd probably agree that, to some extent, our morals are derived from our interactions with others: how we are taught by our parents, our teachers, our clergy, our peer groups and the media. As Pfhorrest knows, I actually don't think that morality is fundamentally like this, rather what we do with our morality is *altered*, rather than created, by society. We have built in moral rules, but we learn exceptions to those rules through social interaction.

Pfhorrest is a moral objectivist insofar as he believes there is exactly one correct answer to all moral questions but I don't think relativism versus objectivism is particularly relevant here. There may indeed be correct answers to moral questions, but that makes no odds to someone who learns *these particular moral rules* from their interactions. One can have a socially constructed morality and still be right or wrong. A strong social constructivist would say that objective moral truths have little to no influence on the moral rules people learn, and I think they'd be close to being right.

Like social constructivism, identity politics can yield a spectrum of claims. Eddie Izzard recently changed his (past) preferred pronoun to she (present), but said she doesn't care which people use. This is identity politics -- Izzard had established a preferred policy regarding her identity -- but it is not the sort of "fascist" identity politics that the right-wing like to accuse people like Izzard of. What are like that are those who would not only be outraged if someone now called Izzard "he", even though she's fine with it, but would be outraged that I referred to her past pronoun as "he" (a la dead-naming). Like strong social constructivists, these have a technical name: assholes.

The historic reason for identity politics is that some social constructs regarding people are harmful. Racism, misogyny and homophobia attempt to establish a natural order with straight white heteronormative people at a supremum and different people at lower strata. Such schemes are oppressive. Since these people are not open to integration and will support the perpetuation of oppressive structures, usually while denying they exist, the oppressed reassert their identities as positive qualities to challenge normalised constructs with negative connotations.

Identity politics is a social construct that is really the flip side of another, oppressive social construct. Gay pride is not an obviously useful construct except in the context of (especially religiously-fuelled) homophobia. Likewise black pride, black power, and BLM.

The problem is that these counter-oppressive identity politics can end up looking as oppressive as the social constructs they sought to challenge, and they often do so by confusing legitimate criticism of new forms of oppression with the original oppressive constructs. Two cases in point are people's reluctance to criticise Israel and the accusations of anti-Semitism they receive when they do, and their reluctance to criticise the excesses of feminism (such as a recent call to presume men guilty until proven innocent) for fear of being accused of misogyny.

If there's a common theme here, it's that sound ideas run amok, and vested interests use this as a means of dismissing the sound idea along with its extreme and absurd conclusions. Or, more briefly, there's assholes of all sizes.

But ceasing to do something you enjoy for no reason is not illogical. That is just your personal opinion and just because you can’t understand it doesn’t make it illogical. — Darkneos

Okay I'm sensing you're a bit of a brick wall. You have no ability to lend insight, and no ability to learn.

Here's a question, though: why do you keep going? I mean... this isn't worthwhile, it's dumb and pointless, but you keep doing it. Why?

Dead men don't post. — unenlightened

We've taken a turn for the noir! Suicidal men (and dames) might post. I'm not genuinely worried about this btw.

I fail to see why any explanation of this choice would be a police matter — unenlightened

It's the opposite choice. If a mod passed the OP's IP to the relevant authorities, they might stick him on a watchlist I guess.

Looking back in time, there could be many ways to achieve the result "2" but only one will be correct. — Gary Enfield

That's epistemology for you: if you lack data, you lack certainty. Causality isn't special in this regard.

But if you know the final state of something and you have all information about the environment it evolved in, in principle the initial state is exactly knowable. Yes, there are other ways to get to that final state, but they will in principle be discernable through interaction with the environment.

Well, they have a vested interest. It appears that, left to their own devices, most people will harm themselves in this way. Health services have two goals: keep people healthy; fix unhealthy people. The latter is incredibly expensive where I am. I think efficacy should come first, although I'm not sure how efficacious preaching is either. I think things like five-a-day has a positive impact on a minority, but doesn't seem to make much of a dent in the broader population.

I would say that characteristics such as being overweight fall into a grey area within the realm of prejudice. — Jack Cummins

Yeah, that's basically all I mean. It's not that there isn't a prejudiced reaction, but it is a very distinct ballpark to incidental physical characteristics.

For instance, because racism and homophobia exist, black and gay pride make sense as compensating ideas. Fat pride -- and people have tried it -- is less justifiable as a response to weight prejudice since it would be endorsing a lifestyle that is the #1 medical problem (in the UK at least). And ultimately that's what obesity is: a national health problem due principally to lifestyle choice, not an incidental physical characteristic one is born with or a fluke of historical circumstance.

I'd put obesity in the same bracket as drug or alcohol addiction: indeed, it is becoming increasingly accepted that it is, in good part, an addiction. As with those, it's something you can sympathise with and wish to help with, but not something that should be enabled or encouraged.

Enjoyment is never intellectual since we don't choose what we like or don't like. — Darkneos

That is incorrect on two fronts. It is perfectly reasonable to enjoy something on an intellectual level: that is called interest. And one certainly can impact what one enjoys, e.g. habit-forming. But more importantly, the latter has nothing to do with the former.

The decision to stop is logical as is to stay, the enjoyment is not. Actually if you are basing the decision on emotions then I guess nothing about it is logical. I mean why do you enjoy it? There is no reason, no logic. — Darkneos

This is illogical. It doesn't follow from the nature of logic that the object of a decision needs to be logical. If you enjoy something and you're at liberty to do it, it is perfectly logical to do it. You seem to have difficulty differentiating between objects and reasoning about them. Both the above points concern the same error.

Irrespective, ceasing to do something you enjoy for no reason is illogical.

You might have been better served pointing me to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed-choice_quantum_eraser - something I've been acquainted with almost since the time of the first experiment. As it is, the wiki article is a shorter read than the thread you've linked to and, it seems to me after skimming the thread, more to the point here addressed. — javra

I think you might have taken a different point than I intended. The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics is what I had in mind, wherein physical events such as emissions are triggered in part by future events (in this case absorption).

Seeing how QM is a posteriori, I find that referencing QM does not address the a priori issue of causality I've previously asked about. — javra

You asked me about my response to Gary's OP. Whatever you might have been discussing beforehand or since is irrelevant to that. It's not all about you, dude :rofl:

For instance, most people buying houses tend to look for homogeneous neighborhoods that reflect themselves and their aspirations. For whites, the means pretty much white neighborhoods. Whites who buy houses in black neighborhoods are, more likely than not, looking for a good deal, with the expectation that eventually the blacks will be priced out of the neighborhood (gentrification). — Bitter Crank

Yes, that's true. At least this is at a somewhat more fuzzy level than, say, the landlords of the 60s refusing to rent to black people who could afford it, or lenders refusing mortgages: a black person can buy a house or rent anywhere they can afford. But yes the economic gradient between white and non-white people rather robs the latter of the ability to capitalise on that. In the UK, I'm not sure that it's, say, black areas whose properties are valued down so much as poor areas, with black communities overwhelmingly stuck in those poor areas. Then again, I am always surprised by how overt racism often is, so my optimism might be misplaced.

Wage discrimination by sex is less severe, and less common than it was in the past. It hasn't disappeared, but it is better. (This applies to the US: what conditions apply in Britain, Europe, and other places, I don't know.) — Bitter Crank

Yes, better here in Britain too. Last time I checked, women in their twenties earned more than men in their twenties. Women still lose out after childbirth, but that will probably change some once feminists realise that paternity leave is a feminist issue.

In most of the G20 countries, anti-gay policies have apparently been mostly repealed, but that doesn't mean that nobody has strong negative feelings about homosexuality -- their own or others'.

Advertising Media in particular project images of the non-existent post racial America. — Bitter Crank

I find that the biggest issue here is not representation so much as people thinking it's reasonable to complain about black or gay people being on their favourite shows. I get that sometimes it can be done in a box-ticking way which isn't good (Doctor Who has a female Doctor \o/, a female Indian companion \o/, a black companion \o/ who is also a bit disabled :|, and an elderly companion :yawn: ), but I find that a lot of people pretend that the presence of any non-white, non-heteronormative person or -- God forbid -- a mixed race couple is the same as shoving PC agendas down their children's throats. So yeah I agree there's a strong underbelly of hate still. A lot of that is pushed by the right-wing press here, without which I suspect the hate would largely die off with my parents' generation.

Gay men appear too in GA, but not in the hot sexual scenes that lesbians and straights appear in (which are tediously frequent). — Bitter Crank

God, I hate this. Same here. TV producers have been much happier to jump on the gay bandwagon when it means having two women lez off for the dads. We do have quite a lot of queer representation but it is rather segregated still.

Another pervasive prejudice in our society is that of people being overweight. Of course, in general the population in Western societies are getting larger. But, people who are overweight are often perceived and treated so negatively. — Jack Cummins

That's somewhat different. One cannot help one's gender, one's skin colour, one's sexuality. One can certainly do something about one's weight in almost all cases. When people judge, say, a person of a particular ethnicity as being criminal, they are prejudging someone as being something they can control on the basis of something they cannot. Judging that overweight people aren't looking after themselves in quite basic ways is not the same. That's not to say that losing excess weight isn't hard -- it is: as an ex-smoker, I know how difficult overcoming cravings are -- but it is something that is good to overcome. One should not, by contrast, feel one ought to overcome one's gender, skin colour or sexuality.

If they believe they won the election despite, you know, the votes, there's no incentive to learn. Plus there's the original reason for the party and the media to get behind Trump: he is the ideal for Fox News audiences. I think the GOP need to lose a couple more elections to realise it's them who are the problem.

It's just now society has moved on to not being pro-racist, pro-sexist, pro-homophobic.
— Kenosha Kid

Maybe. — Bitter Crank

Well, mostly.

Biology consists of functional parts, each of which has its own needs and performs a vital function as part of the whole.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

The first was descriptive, the second predictive, the third proscriptive.

That said, "cancel culture" is overstated. No one is obliged to give you a platform for your opinions, and every employer is free to fire someone who represents them ill. This has always been the case. You would have struggled to keep a media job in the west throughout most of the 20th century if you were openly a Nazi. It's just now society has moved on to not being pro-racist, pro-sexist, pro-homophobic.

Is it? If I am enjoying a film where is the logic in staying? That's not logic that is emotion. — Darkneos

That is incorrect. Enjoyment of the film may be emotional or intellectual, but the decision to stop watching half an hour before the end is illogical, and the decision to watch to the end logical (other factors aside... if the cinema is on fire, leave).

You make it sound like Moslem women are terrified of the violence that would follow if they switch to Western-style clothing and thus are just a bunch of downtrodden women waiting for a liberator-savior. Possible, quite possible. All we can do at this point is to wait and watch. — TheMadFool

As I said, many might wear it anyway for cultural reasons, but while that threat of violence exists, it can't be dismissed. Remove the threat of violence and let women wear what they want.

Are you suggesting A) that the outcome/effect can *ontologically* determine its cause(s)? Or only B) that we can at times *epistemologically* determine cause(s) by the outcomes/effects that are observed? — javra

That said: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9391/determinism-reversibility-decoherence-and-transaction

Yes, based on what you said about yourself. — baker

A misreading, then, as ANDs instead of ORs. There are lots of things I love. Travelling and scuba diving are quite expensive. Reading is quite cheap. I write too. Music took some investment (instruments, recording equipment) but is free after that.

It also helps to take an interest in other people. The first thing I recorded that I was happy with was at a friend's house. Didn't cost a penny. Friendship can alleviate poverty some.

Until recently, I have rarely been in the black, but I don't waste money on bullshit. Again, it's about making the most of what you've got.

That's bad faith on your part. — baker

No, on his. To ask someone a question but disbelieve them if the answer isn't what you want is the quintessence of bad faith.

While ignoring how psychological definitions and diagnoses come about, of course. — baker

Through actually taking it seriously, rather than inventing hair-brained theories that don't match the facts.

The thing is that neither you, nor mainstream psychologists can give actionable instructions on how to enjoy life. — baker

Once again, the question was not "How should I live my life?" but "Why do YOU choose to go on."

Has it ever occured to you that this was a somewhat clumsy attempt to formulate an existential problem, rather than an attack on other people's happiness? — baker

I think he wants people to give him the answer he already knows he wants.

So there's two distinct things here: context-dependence, and categories. We can discern the difference between 'book' in "Do we need to book a table?" and in "The Idiot is Dostoevsky's best book" based on the context, i.e the rest of the sentence. Where this is not possible, we have genuine ambiguity. A specific book is a specific element of the category 'book'. We can recognise all trees as 'tree' because all trees have something in common that (mostly) distinguishes each from everything that is not 'tree'.

I've been talking about people whose happiness depends on material wellbeing, and what applies to those people. — baker

Of which you counted me among. So yes, that is what you did.

Or he's hitting a wall in conversations because he's not talking to anyone who can "take him to the next level", so to speak. — baker

I think it's because, as Gus has pointed out, he doesn't field answers he's not predisposed to agree with. Other people's happiness appears to be a big problem for him.

No, I'm talking about your outlook, your mentality. It's perfectly possible to be of lower middle class (and lower) and have an upper middle class mentality. If you went to a public school, that's what you probably got there. — baker

I didn't go to a public school. Stop making stuff up, it's pointless.

For presenting or misrepresenting it like that, I'd have to believe it's a physical illness. Which I don't. — baker

That's the problem. People can and successfully do get medical assistance in dealing with depression. It is scientifically quite well understood. It is harmful to peddle nonsense about it being merely a projection of a power structure as it ignores the actual causes. Depression is not madness. We're not in Foucault territory here. It is a biological concern (e.g. Strawbridge R, Young AH, Cleare AJ. Biomarkers for depression: recent insights, current challenges and future prospects. Neuropsychiatry Dis Treat. 2017;13:1245-1262. Published 2017 May 10. doi:10.2147/NDT.S114542)

It's a testing point for you: You keep talking about "all the more reason to enjoy life while you can". I'm giving you an example that puts your attitude to the test. — baker

The attitude is not tested by offering someone something that's irrelevant to them. I'm not homeless and I still don't want chocolate. I don't know if chocolate is anyone's reason for living. Not relevant.

And why you subscribe to mainstream psychology -- to avoid the stigma? — baker

Because evidence-based reasoning is a good way to avoid bad faith activity. Stops you joining weird cults or supporting Trump.

In short, I maintain that it is possible to become fed up with the pursuit of pleasure, and that this is not necessarily due to an illness. — baker

It's certainly possible to become fed up with anything you do in bad faith. Overeating, binge-watching TV, crawling Tinder for one-night stands, chasing fashions. I don't know if it's possible for someone who enjoys life generally to get fed up with it; I suspect there are edge cases, but on the whole happy people, barring accidents and even in spite of them, seem pretty happy forever in my experience.

Again, none of that is relevant. The question was:

I want to know WHY people choose to go on. — Darkneos

My response is why I choose to go on. It would no more occur to me to end my own life than it would to walk out half an hour before the end of a film I'm enjoying. It's just an illogical thing to do when you're enjoying it.

Are you suggesting A) that the outcome/effect can *ontologically* determine its cause(s)? Or only B) that we can at times *epistemologically* determine cause(s) by the outcomes/effects that are observed? — javra

B.

And people should just quietly accept the verdict that official psychology charges them with ... — baker

They should quietly accept that making stuff up is invalid.

Maybe a particle is merely a standing wave? — Enrique

Spot on, but in 4D instead of 3D. A good analogy is Bloch waves: these are steady-state waves in periodic structures such as crystals. Stationary Bloch states have no momenta either because a) they consist principally of zero-momentum terms, or b) they consist of non-zero momenta terms in equal and opposite degrees. The latter can be seen as a superposition of e.g. particles moving forward through the crystal and particles moving backward. In fact, statistically we cannot differentiate between two particles in these stationary states and two that are moving with equal speed in opposite directions: the many-body wavefunction is the same for each.

The idea expressed in the OP, and expressed by yourself above, is a 4D generalisation of this. Each particle is a 4D standing wave that can be decomposed into parts moving forward in time (retarded wavefunction) and parts going backward in time (advanced wavefunction). They're not exactly analogous: in Bloch waves the operation is additive, in these they are multiplicative, but they are very similar.

Las-Vegas is closed due to
COVID-19, but its model of business has become ubiquitous via WallStreetBets. — Number2018

Are you seriously trying to suggest that WallStreetBets are responsible for casino economics? That's hilarious!

The issue I take with your outlook is that it is an upper-middle class/elite outlook, based on their privileges. You tie in with the old tradition where poor people were routinely considered mad. — baker

I've been like this since I was a child. I grew up with a single parent in council housing at a time when that was considered immoral. Your equating of wealth and happiness is false.

Your idea of happiness (and normalcy, mental health) is one that is contingent on material wellbeing. — baker

It depends on being interested in the world around you. It's quite fortunate that we've evolved brains that are interested in the universe they evolved in. Second-hand books are cheap. Pen and paper for writing and drawing is cheap. Radio is free. (When I was a child, we all used to tape the top 40 and DJ our own sessions.) Again, you falsely equate wealth and happiness. I don't dream of partying with models in a $40M yacht. I don't feel bad about this. You do what you can with what you've got.

So per an outlook like yours, they are destined to be depressed, classified as mentally ill -- and written off. — baker

Again, nothing to do with it. Darkneos' objection was not that he couldn't afford to go scuba diving: there are other fun things to do. His objection is that doing anything for enjoyment sounds like a "chore". That is not a financial issue. It sounds like depression, which is probably why he keeps hitting that wall in conversations.

Depression is not a traditional means of the wealthy to oppress the poor. Its recognition is relatively recent, and getting people to take it seriously is an uphill struggle. Rather than using it to box away difference, it is still largely brushed off as being too mopey, like the depressed person has a choice. You are not only misrepresenting my economic status, you are misrepresenting societal inertia in recognising depression as a physical illness.

Global socio-economic covid crisis, anyone? Hardly negligible. — baker

Well, I was referring to malicious actors. A virus is not a moral agent. Accidents, including pandemics, can also impact our happiness, yes. Again, all the more reason to enjoy life while you can, and a terrible reason to be wilfully miserable.

If you give a homeless person with terminal cancer a piece of chocolate, do you really think they are in any position "to make the most of it"? — baker

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything I've said.

I want to see how profound their happiness is. If they bask in their happiness and stigmatize everyone who isn't like them — baker

That is hysterical and paranoid.

Which just goes to show that your enjoyment of life is not under your control. — baker

It's not entirely under my control: I cannot stop someone from murdering me, for instance, if their heart is set on it. But it's not entirely outside my control either: even without malicious actors, I could deprive myself of enjoyment, for instance by bad faith.

If a person can't be happy when external conveniences are taken from them, then their happiness with those conveniences in place is weak, fragile, a liability. — baker

A negligible one for the most part since, fortunately, few people dedicate themselves to making others unhappy.

For every human, it's just a matter of time when those external conveniences are taken from them -- by disease, injury, accident, economic collapse, natural catastrophe. — baker

That seems to me a good argument for making the most of it. Btw your presumption that happy people will become unhappy after an accident is not valid. A miserable person who wins the lottery will enjoy temporary happiness but become a rich miserable person in the end. A happy person who becomes paralysed will suffer for some time but become a happy person in a wheelchair in the end.

Generally one's happiness comes from within, be it their biology or their acting in good faith.

I want to test the Buddha's teachings, and for this, subjects who declare to "enjoy life" are necessary. — baker

It's interesting though that your instinct upon meeting a happy person is to want to change their environment in order to:

wonder how long you'd still enjoy life — baker

rather than just let them enjoy life.

Ah, I see what you're saying. Yes, in a sense the overlap between retarded and advanced waves that 'realise' the particle trajectory is a kind of interference. However it needn't and apparently doesn't collapse which slit the particle travelled through (which would destroy the interference pattern).

I'm not sure where holography comes into it though.

I wish I could do an experiment with you and drag you into the pits of early Buddhist thought. I wonder how long you'd still enjoy life. — baker

Probably not a lot, since I will have been kidnapped and deprived of the things I love about life.

I have heard and experienced that people who don't get much out of life are extremely selfish. Did not realise they were so vindictive and petty though.

You intend to fully exploit a privilege? Interesting choice of words. — baker

Damn straight I do.

Or seeing the true nature of enjoyment. — baker

Sounds more like missing the nature of it entirely. It's not a distraction; it's a project.

The photon shows up as a single speck on the florescent screen, with an interference pattern built up as the statistics of many individual particles? — Enrique

Exactly right.

The original double-slit experiment diffracted a beam of light into a spreading field before it reached the double-slit, so it was most certainly traveling through both slits simultaneously to interfere with itself, but the modern double-slit experiment could be different. — Enrique

What the low-frequency experiment tells us is that it isn't one photon from the beam interfering with another photon, but each photon interfering with itself, likewise for electrons. If there was an additional many-photon interference effect, it should be evident in the interference pattern on the screen.

How it has possibly gotten to this point is beyond me. Obviously, there is no way to pay back the debt (and hasn't been since the 80's), but as you probably know, countries never really intend on paying back debt. — synthesis

My country has been effectively bankrupt since WWII, doubly so since Thatcherism. Before the pandemic, we were still the fifth largest economy and had the fourth highest growth. So yeah... never going back. There are few alive who recall an economy not based on debt.

He doesn't even need a defense. 45 Senators voted that it's unconstitutional to impeach ex-Presidents, so they're a guaranteed "no" whatever is said at the trial. — Michael

That would be quite corrupt (and therefore you're right, that's what will happen). Congress has already answered the question of whether an ex-President can be impeached: those 45 were in the minority. The question put to the Senate is whether he is guilty of what he is accused of. Voting in the Senate that he should not be impeached would be undemocratic, i.e. counter to the will of the democratically-elected House. Since Republicans are undemocratic, we should expect it.